CHRIS Coleman rarely disappoints when the media are sniffing around for an eyecatching quote to dress up their midweek match reports.

But the Coventry City boss – fresh from collecting his £1,000 ‘improper conduct’ fine – was atypically coy on Tuesday night when he was invited to comment on referee Amy Fearn’s ground-breaking stint as a Ricoh Arena substitute.

“I’ve just had my backside slapped by the FA so I’m saying nothing,” laughed the Welshman after 34-year-old Fearn had replaced the hobbling Tony Bates in the 70th minute to become the first woman to take charge of a Football League match.

His body language told the tale, however, and if we were to put words into his mouth (a practice that’s not exactly unprecedented in modern journalism) one suspects it would run along the lines of ‘she did a hell of a lot better than the bloke she replaced.’

Bates, who has been on the National List since 1997, was one of those infuriating officials who missed a succession of brazen blocks and pushes and yet dished out first-half yellow cards to home centre-halves Richard Wood and James McPake for what looked, at worst, 50-50 tussles with Dexter Blackstock.

Although Forest’s fans (who made up an impressive 3,483 share of the 18,225 crowd) joined in the general ‘you’re not fit to referee’ merriment when he keeled over with a calf strain, the home supporters were clearly more relieved to see the back of Bates.

There were a few predictable wolf-whistles when his assistant took centre stage, but she was spared the traditional lads-mag chants – and, although she obviously knew she was making history, she adopted an admirably lowprofile, commonsense approach to her upgraded responsibilities.

Both sides appealed for penalties but she quite rightly ruled that each was a case of ball-to-hand (a definition that seems beyond far too many of her colleagues these days).

She dealt with one minor flare-up, issuing a yellow card to City’s Carl Baker in the process, and kept her head as the Sky Blue Army howled for the final whistle during the five minutes of overtime.

In short, she met the classic definition of a good referee – efficient and unobtrusive – and one suspects that even Mike Newell might have been impressed.

The former Luton Town boss was fined £6,500 and forced to issue a fulsome apology to Fearn (née Rayner) in 2006 when he seemed to hold her personally responsible for the Hatters’ 3-2 defeat against QPR because she declined to flag for an early penalty.

“This isn’t parks football so what are women doing here,” he demanded – answering his own question by claiming she represented “tokenism for politically-correct idiots” before adding, by way of a somewhat unnecessary explanation, “I know that sounds sexist but I am sexist.”

That churlish evaluation was in sharp contrast to the assessments of managers Jan Molby and Brendan Phillips when Amy made football history for the first time, joining referee Wendy Toms and fellow assistant Janie Frampton to take charge of a 1999 clash between Kidderminster and Nuneaton.

Derek Brown – then as now our man at Boro – rated the trio the most efficient combination he saw that season.

And if Tuesday’s cameo is anything to go by, this particular woman in black should soon be taking the whistle on a regular basis.